The
Academical Village All Things Political of Dr. David Garrison
American Exceptionalism
"America is the only nation in the
world that is founded on a creed. That creed is set forth with dogmatic and even
theological lucidity in the Declaration of Independence. . . ."
-- G. K. Chesterton
"The Declaration lends itself to that myth in
ways the Articles or the Constitution could never do. They are messier
enterprises, with the stamp of compromise upon them. To This the Articles add a
note of failure and the Constitution adds a note of illegality. The convention
that drew up our Constitution went far beyond its mandate; in effect, smuggled a
ndw nation in upon the continent rather than bringing it forth by intellectual
impregnation."
- Gary Wills, Inventing America, 1978, p., xvii "Exceptionalism
did constitute the predominant language of politics. It became a presumptive
consensus, if not a consensus in fact, deriving its normative force both from
its dominant position in political discourse and from its national ideology."
- Ross, The Origins of American Social Science, 1991, p. 29
"The genius of American democracy comes not from any special virtue of
the American people but from the unprecedented opportunities of this continent
and from a peculiar and unrepeatable combination of historical circumstances.
These circumstances have given our institutions their character and their
virtues. . . They explain our lack of interest in political theory, and why we
are doomed to failure in any attempt to sum up our way of life in slogans and
dogmas."
- Boorstin, The Genius of American Politics"The story we
tell about ourselves as an exceptional nation exempt from history (from the
lessons of other peoples' stories) is a perfect representation of what it means
for a nation to have a defining story as well as of why defining stories need to
be contested. For the exceptionalist story is not merely a retrospective
ideology foisted on the past by arrogant moderns or a product of
nineteenth-century imperialist reading its own ambitions back onto the past.
Exceptionalism was a concomitant of the American founding -- indeed, one of the
principles by which was justified."
- Barber, An Aristocracy of Everyone, 1992, p.55-56
American Exceptionalism
A Double Edged Sword
By Seymour Martin Lipset
